A trip to the hospital is never fun, but you would hope to have the best experience possible.
It was far from that for a Brampton woman who ended up on a stretcher in a busy hallway for five days last month at Brampton Civic Hospital.
Jamie-Lee Ball tells NEWSTALK 1010 that she was in excruciating pain, suffering from internal bleeding.
She says she couldn't believe how overcrowded the hospital was.
"They didn't even have pillows available for people," she tells Moore in the Morning.
Ball says the doctors and nurses were great, doing what they could with the resources they had.
Hospital officials say they were under a Code Gridlock, which kicks in when they are overcrowded. They hit Code Gridlock 10 times last year.
While the hospital was built to accomodate 250 patients, officials say they have been averaging 350 people a day, as high as 475.
Minister of Health Eric Hoskins says the province gave the William Osler Health System, which runs the hospital, $25-million last year to help deal with emergency room volumes.
The premier has also said that the opening of a new Urgent Care Centre at Peel Memorial, which opened nearby in February, will help with the patient volumes in Brampton.
But Dr. Naveed Mohammad, vice president of medical affairs with Osler, tells NEWSTALK 1010 that while it made a difference for over a week, they have since again seen about 40 per cent more patients than they have room for.
He says the new Urgent Care Centre has not made a difference because it has no beds for patients who need to stay overnight, meanwhile they have been seeing many patients who are very sick.
Dr. Mohammad says more beds are needed in Brampton, whether Brampton Civic is expanded, or a second hospital is built.
"I want the community to know that we're working very closely with the hospital ... to continue to look for solutions," Hoskins says.